A mother anxiously hugs her baby, a teenager fears for his father staying in the besieged city, and a little girl doesn’t know why her grandpa can’t come on the bus. These refugees are just some of those fleeing Lugansk to escape Kiev’s crackdown.

“It is not safe for them [children] to stay here after
everything that is happening. We want them to stay alive,” a
crying woman hugging her small daughter close to her heart told
RT’s Paula Slier, who spoke to refugees from the eastern
Ukrainian city of Lugansk.

The refugees have been forced to leave the troubled city since
Kiev intensified the military crackdown on the country’s east.
Now families, packing their bags into buses and crying, are
leaving for an uncertain future.

“We don’t know what will happen there and for how long this
situation will continue. We want to return home as quickly as
possible,” Olga, another refugee, told RT.

The residents have been on the waiting list for days. One woman
told RT that she received a phone call in the morning which told
her that she had less than four hours to pack her things and
leave Lugansk.

“The airplanes and the bombings are the scariest because you
don't know where they’re going to fall and when. We can't always
stay inside a basement because of the small children,” says
Victoria, another mother who is traveling with her daughters and
like all women in the bus have had to leave her husband and her
family in the besieged city.

Victoria’s small daughter, a small girl of at least four year
old, doesn’t understand why the other members of her family can’t
go with her to the safe place.

“I told my father and grandmother that I want to come home to
them,” she adds.

Meanwhile, many refugees feel torn and almost abandoned about
taking the decision to leave. Valera, a teenager from the
troubled city says that he worries about his father who has been
left behind.

“It's really hard because I probably won't see him for a very
long time. It could be months. It could even be years,”
Valera told RT.

However, it’s scary to sleep at night in the besieged city, says
the teenager, adding that “the bombs might fall any
minute.”

Paula Slier was travelling with Lugansk refugees in the bus to
the Russian-Ukrainian border.

“I congratulate every passenger with crossing the border to
Russia,” a border guard told the tired mothers who have been
long seeking calm future for their children. His words were
immediately met with cheers.

The refugees from all parts of eastern Ukrainian continue to
arrive in Russia to escape Kiev’s military operation. The
citizens of another eastern city, Slavyansk, who are now living
without tap water, are also leaving the city. A driver who said
he evacuates at least 10 residents a day from Slavyansk told RT
that Ukrainian troops only let women and children leave the city,
but they are forced to walk through the checkpoints.

After the recent shelling of the church in the center of
Slavyansk, many residents are strongly determined to leave the
besieged city.

Overall, over 12,000 people from the crisis-torn country have
arrived in Russia, according to data from June 6.

According to authorities in Russia’s Rostov Region, about 20,000
women and children from Ukraine’s southeast have crossed the
border into in the last three days, say. At least 7,335 Ukrainian
citizens have entered the region in the last 24 hours, they add.